All you people that say birs don't have milk are wrong. doves read up.?

Question

All you people that say birs don't have milk are wrong. doves read up.?

Answer 1

Yes, pigeons and at least some doves produce "pigeon milk" from their crops and regurgitate it to feed their chicks.  Flamingos do it too.

The term "milk" in this case is rather a metaphor, as it isn't the same process used by mammals.  It looks kind of like yellow cottage cheese.  But anyway, it is more complex than the usual avian procedure of mushing up food in the crop and feeding the mush to the chicks.

I have 2 pigeon/dove chicks in my aviary now; they double their size every day and eat a pound of pigeon milk each per day.  Just kidding; but it kind of seems that way.  The father pigeon and the mother dove allow me to handle the chicks, as apparently they decided I won't harm them.

Answer 2

Sorry but birds do not produce milk.  I also have not seen anyone saying anything like you indicate.  

Dove are from a family of birds that exhibit a lot of parental care, Columbiformes.  The first few days of a baby birds life the parents, yes both of them, feed their young crop milk.  It is not milk, not even close to human or dairy cow milk, mothers or otherwise.  It is made from broken down digested seeds.  After those first few days the young are feed regurgitate food from the parents.  

Your is a case of a little knowledge being used inappropriately.  Be better informed.

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/si...

Answer 3

Yes, I was milking my flock of chickens the other day when a lactating dove flew by.

Answer 4

Be very careful when you tell people that they are wrong. Just because crop secretions are called "pigeon milk" doesn't make them real milk, any more than butterlies, dragonfiles, mayflies, and caddisflies are real flies. At least you haven't encountered "coconut milk" and "coconut cream", yet.

A little knowlege is a dangerous thing.

Drink deep or taste not the Perian Spring

For shallow draughts intoxicate the brain

But drinking largely sobers us again.

-- Pope